


The Ouroboros Waltz

by Insular_Keyboard_Chimp



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Gen, Heroism, Love/Hate, Mari Can (Not) Be Stopped, Movie: The End of Evangelion, Multi, Time Loop, Timeline Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-26 03:12:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19759405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insular_Keyboard_Chimp/pseuds/Insular_Keyboard_Chimp
Summary: Sometimes she wonders, and she laughs in her frustration. Will someone please explain the reason for her strange behavior?





	The Ouroboros Waltz

She'll dance until the music stops. That's what she's always done, stumbling with her two left feet until the rhythm of the timeline settled in her bones. Piloting Unit-08 was no different than learning to walk, Mari thought. She'd done it a billion, trillion times. She'd squeezed into her pilot seat, jerking the seesaw levers and fiddling with the buttons of her stubborn Unit-08 until it yielded to her desires.

Asuka operated Unit-02 with sheer force of will; that was something Mari could admire, if not emulate. That little feline smile she'd quirk whenever Asuka complained about the world was tinted with the wisdom of someone whose years of piloting experience outnumbered the stars in the sky. Really, Mari should've thanked Asuka for that. Should've thanked her for the epiphany that changed everything.

They were so alike, at first -- hell, Mari could see part of herself in everyone. Earnest little Maya, who'd never acknowledge the possibility of defeat. Ayanami, who'd grown tired and resigned to her fate. Mysterious, wickedly clever Kaji and tragically determined Misato. Infinitely willful Kaworu, who played roulette with the universe until he was too broke and broken to continue.

Shinji, who was too stupid and naïve to understand that he lived in a world that wouldn't _permit_ him to run away, let alone give him anywhere to run to.

Anywhere except the loving embrace of Unit-01.

Gendo, who'd loved Yui to death and was still too selfish to let her rest in peace.

There was a reason Mari's synchronization rate skyrocketed out of nowhere. The machine wasn't letting her in -- she was letting Unit-08 into her. As a little joke after a tragic accident during the fifteenth reboot, Mari suggested to Asuka that her synchronization rate might improve if she just let the Eva do whatever it pleased on the battlefield. That earned her a slap in the face when Asuka recovered from hospitalization. Mari just smiled and started to butcher a chart topper from a Seventies Billboard Hot 100's list: partially to ease the tension, but mostly to celebrate that Mari realized that she was finally on the right track.

It was the same reason she could parachute onto a rooftop from an impossible altitude in a _miniskirt_. Honestly, the schoolgirl uniform never got old, even if she did. It's why she shut off comms whenever Misato started shouting and drank iced tea in her pilot seat, where there was a perfect cushion for her ass and plenty of room to lay her legs over the armrest. She'd done it all before, so why not just _go with it?_ _Forcing outcomes didn't work out too well for Gendo._

And Mari would be damned before she started getting scowl lines and wrinkles.

Ritsuko and Misato missed that window a long time ago, unfortunately.

It was really time for this to end. No more Rei, she'd decided. No more stupid Shinji or angry Asuka or oceans of LCL drowning innocent people caught in NERV's typhoon of grief and regret.

Mari firmly planted her feet on the pedals of Unit-08 and positioned herself properly in the cockpit. As the raw, primal energy of the biomechanical goliath coursed through her -- as Mari channeled the infamous _Beast of Man's Good Intentions_ , she thought of a world without Yui. A world that finally understood that even the most precious things must be _let go_.

**Author's Note:**

> Mari is Hideaki Anno's author avatar and nobody can convince me otherwise.


End file.
